The Death of an Ambitious Woman (3 page)

The house looked empty when they pulled up, but as Moscone parked, a woman rounded the corner and stopped on the path to the side door. She pushed an old-fashioned baby carriage. A toddler and a preschooler, both boys, hung on either side.

Moscone jumped from the car. “Excuse me!” he called out, flagging the woman down. Up close, she was gaunt and pale. Her dark blond hair fell limply below her shoulders. There were deep blue circles under her gray eyes. Moscone held out his badge.

“Is he dead?” she asked, her voice barely audible.

“Is who dead?”

“My husband. When I saw you, I thought—”

“Are you Mrs. Pace?”

“Yes, I’m Karen Pace.” The pale woman swayed. The toddler clung to her skirt.

Moscone put his arm out to steady her. “We’re not here to tell you he’s dead.”

“He didn’t come home last night. I was going to call you, but I wasn’t sure—”

“Is it common for him not to come home?” McGrath growled, coming up behind.

The woman flinched. “He’s never done it before.”

“Mrs. Pace, may we come in?” Moscone asked as gently as he could.

“Sure.We’re just getting back from the schoolyard.The house is a mess. I’ve been so worried about Al, I haven’t got much done.”

Karen Pace lifted the sleeping baby out of the carriage and entered the house through the side door. Moscone glanced around at the unkempt yard, inhaled deeply and followed her inside. McGrath and the little boys brought up the rear.

They entered a big, old kitchen with a wooden table at its center. The room was tidy and inviting. Apparently for Mrs. Pace, “a mess” meant breakfast dishes soaking in the sink. She offered tea. Moscone accepted for them both. Mrs. Pace moved around the kitchen, working expertly with one hand, holding the sleeping baby against her shoulder with the other.

When they were seated at the table, Moscone ran through the routine questions, McGrath sitting silently by his side. Karen Pace answered quietly. She’d last seen Al when he left in the Screw Loose truck Tuesday morning. She didn’t know where he might be. None of his things seemed to be missing and his truck was in its usual position in the yard. That was what alarmed her so. Nothing was different and yet everything was.

The baby, dressed in blue, lay on his back across her lap. He let out a tiny snort and rubbed his nose in sleep.

Moscone leaned forward. “Why didn’t you call us, Mrs. Pace?”

Karen Pace sighed deeply, using her free hand to cover her eyes. A tear slid over her cheek. “I thought about it. I was afraid he’d come back and be mad at me.” Her voice cracked. “Now I’m afraid he won’t come back.” She allowed herself one sob, a deep double intake of breath, and then composed herself, wiping her eyes with the side of her hand and glancing nervously toward the little boys in the other room.

Moscone followed her gaze. He was impressed by the woman’s strength. In spite of what must have been sickening worry, she got up this morning, made breakfast, and took the children out.

“Has your husband been under any unusual stress lately?”

Karen nodded miserably. The story came out in bits and pieces, but the picture they formed was all too familiar these days. The Paces were in terrible financial trouble. “Al thinks his old boss tricked him into paying too much for Screw Loose. Some months we pay on the house, some months on the business. We’re always behind.”

The kettle whistled. Karen stood, shifting the baby once again. Moscone felt McGrath beside him, fidgeting with impatience. Moscone pushed back his chair and walked into the next room.The toddler and the preschooler were under the dining table, building with large plastic blocks. Otherwise, the room was spotless. A corner cabinet stood on the far side of the room, covered with framed photographs of four little boys, alone or in groups. They were set-piece shots, the kind taken at the mall around the holidays. In the center of the hutch was the Paces’ wedding portrait.

Karen Pace looked much the same—and very different. She was thin, but not yet gaunt; pale, but not yet wan. She wasn’t conventionally pretty, but her smile was warm and she glowed in the way all brides should.

Al Pace was something else again. Broad through the shoulders and chest, his muscles bulged under his rented tuxedo. His skin was a dark, honey-colored tan, which set off his piercing green eyes and bright white teeth. A golden mane curled to his collar. Though Moscone didn’t consider himself much of a judge of these things, it was indisputable—Al Pace was a stunningly good-looking man. Moscone returned to the kitchen and handed McGrath the photograph.

When they were seated around the table again, Moscone asked, “Have you ever heard of Tracey Kendall?” “No.” “Fiske & Holden?”

“No.”

Moscone nodded. “Mrs. Pace, I think we’d better find your husband. Tracey Kendall died in an automobile accident yesterday, right after Al finished working on her car.”

“You’re not saying Al had anything to do with it, are you?” Her voice rose in alarm. “Al’s a fantastic mechanic. Ask anybody. Around here, they all bring their cars to Al.”

“I understand, Mrs. Pace. Right now we don’t know what happened. We need to find Al so he can help us figure it out.”

Karen Pace didn’t respond. Moscone looked around the kitchen again, impressed with its cleanliness and the care taken with each item in it. “You have a beautiful home,” he offered, thinking it might be the one observation that could soothe.

“Thank you. It was my grandmother’s. I used to come here every day after school and help her clean and make supper. When she passed, Al and I had the chance to buy it from my family. I’ve always loved this house.” Karen Pace smiled. For the first time Moscone caught a glimpse of the woman in the wedding photo. “Are we done? I have to pick up my oldest boy at kindergarten soon.”

They stood to go. “If you could just get us a different photograph of Al,” Moscone said, indicating the wedding picture. “I wouldn’t want to take this one.”

When they left the Pace house, McGrath wandered out along the stables, standing on his toes to peer through the high windows of the old doors. The place was cluttered with junk. The contrast between Mrs. Pace’s domain in the house and Al’s in the stable and yard was striking.

The first four bays of the garage were full. Each held a car in some stage of reconstruction. One had its engine pulled apart. Two were in the throes of major body work. The fourth was up on a portable lift. The fifth bay was empty.

“Hey, hotshot!” McGrath called to Moscone. “Come here and tell me what you see.”

Moscone could look through the stable window without standing on his toes. “It’s empty.”

“What else?”

“There’s fresh oil stains on the floor.”

“So?”

“So something has been in here recently.”

“Moscone, maybe we’ll make you a detective yet.”

“I’ve been a detective on the night shift for two—”

“What else do you see?”

This time Moscone wasn’t so quick to answer. “He has a license plate collection. There are old plates from all over the place hung up on the walls.”

“What else?”

Moscone paused again. “A few plates are missing. There are spaces on the wall where they’ve been moved.”

“Know what this means?”

“It means Al Pace disappeared in an unknown vehicle with three untraceable license plates.”

McGrath shook his head. “It means the chief is going to have us running around investigating this bullshit case for days to come, is what it means.”

In the basement at headquarters, Ruth requested Tracey Kendall’s effects from the property clerk, who was plainly startled to see her in his subterranean domain. Back when the WPA had constructed the building, its lowest level had contained its jail, but today the lack of adequate light or ventilation rendered the cells inhumane by any modern standard. No longer able to use it to secure people, New Derby used the little jail to secure things—the weapons, drugs, money, pornography, and personal artifacts that made up evidence. The old kitchen, processing, and guard rooms had been converted to one large, grated vault lined with storage shelves. The four small cells were left intact, each one furnished with a table used to examine evidence.

Ruth carried the unwieldy box into one of the cells, pulled on latex gloves and removed a leather handbag, briefcase, full gym bag, and the slim silver phone on which Tracey Kendall had her last conversation. Carefully, Ruth removed the contents of the leather handbag—wallet, lipstick, compact, hairbrush, toothpaste, and a toothbrush in a case.The wallet contained $512.27, a large amount, but not ridiculous. Ruth knew from experience rich people sometimes carried lots of cash.

The briefcase was tailored yet feminine. Ruth popped its lock. Inside, she found a matching pen and pencil, a folder of newsletters and reports, a leather-bound personal organizer, and a notebook computer with a neatly tied electric cord. Ruth flipped the organizer open to the page for Tuesday, the day of the accident. Tracey had noted a 9:30
A
.
M
. conference call. After that, nothing.The back of the organizer contained separate sections including a long series of To Do lists, notes, expenses, and an address book. Ruth was struck by the order Tracey Kendall imposed on the things around her.

Ruth turned on the small computer, groaning when a password box came up. She made a couple of obvious tries, variations on “Carson,” “Stephen,” “Tracey.” Nothing. Ruth also tried to turn on the mobile phone, but either it had been damaged in the crash or its battery had died, and there was no charger among Tracey’s effects.

Ruth unzipped the gym bag. The fresh, slightly sweet smell of Tracey Kendall’s perfume wafted up from the inside. Ruth wished Moscone were there. He could have told her what it was.The gym bag was full of neatly folded clothes—faded jeans, two turtlenecks, a work shirt, a man’s t-shirt, a cardigan, several pairs of socks and underwear, and a pair of tennis shoes. There was an aerobics outfit, leotard and spandex shorts, in a separate zippered compartment. Ruth removed the contents from the bag. The well-worn clothes were an unexpected contrast to the professional edge of the briefcase and pocketbook. Ruth lifted the jeans to her cheek. They were as soft as flannel.

Probing along the inside of the duffel with her gloved hands, Ruth found a small pocket in the lining. She pulled out a felt pouch, emptying it onto the tabletop. There were two pieces of jewelry, a bracelet encircled with diamonds and a locket. Inside the locket were two pictures of the same boy, one taken in babyhood, the other at four or five. Tracey’s son Carson, no doubt. He wore the same serious demeanor in each of the pictures.

Ruth held the open locket in her hand. Tracey Kendall’s beautiful possessions were now orphans. No one would likely ever love them as she had. The boy, at least, still had a father, but Ruth knew from experience that having one parent was not the same as having two. She had been around Carson Kendall’s age when her father had walked off into the night without explanation or good-bye. The hole it left was permanent.

Ruth stepped back and surveyed Tracey Kendall’s possessions spread across the tabletop. She couldn’t identify the designer of the handbag, briefcase, or wallet, but she could tell they were expensive. Three of New Derby’s seven villages were dominated by people like Tracey Kendall, sons and daughters of privilege who had parlayed their head start in life into a rout. Ruth didn’t like these people. She didn’t like their sense of entitlement or the way they were so often oblivious to the pressures in other people’s lives. She didn’t like it when they treated her officers like servants, instead of seeing them as enforcers of the law. She didn’t need the grief this case would bring with it, especially not now when her appointment was so close at hand.

But when Ruth turned from the expensive leather pieces and looked at the pile of old clothes, her hostility faded. She picked up the cardigan. It was old, even slightly pilled. The essence of Tracey Kendall clung to it. These clothes were not for an emergency change or to be put on after a workout. Ruth recognized them as Tracey’s time-worn favorites, packed with care. They were exactly the kind of clothes Ruth would have taken if she’d been forced to select from all her things those that would fit into a single bag.

“Tracey Kendall, where were you going?” Ruth asked the cell walls.

Ruth was sitting at her desk, eating a solitary lunch, waiting impatiently for McGrath and Moscone to return, when Mayor Rosenfeld knocked twice at the frame of her open door and bounced into her office.

“What’s hot?” The mayor started every conversation with the same question. His curiosity about anything that was happening in New Derby was boundless.

“Fatal car wreck.”

The mayor nodded, his jowls moving up and down. Rosenfeld’s heavy features gave him a mournful look, though he was generally one of the most energetic, optimistic people Ruth knew. “I heard. Willow Road. Terrible accident.”

“I don’t think it was. An accident, that is.”

“Really?” Now Rosenfeld was interested. “What exactly do you think?”

“I’m not sure,” Ruth replied honestly. “The mechanic who worked on the woman’s car right before the crash has disappeared.”

“Negligence?”

“Could be.” Ruth kept her tone neutral. “Is that what you came to talk to me about?”

“What? Oh, no. I came to talk about the search firm’s report and what we do next.”

Ruth smiled expectantly. Finally, the mayor was going to give her the good news. He continued, “We’ve got big problems.”

Ruth willed herself to be calm, to remember the mayor’s penchant for hyperbole, but she could feel the heat spreading under her uniform. Ruth had learned, in childhood and at work, to stay in control, but there was a traitor living in her body. Heightened emotion—anger, fear, excitement—brought on a deep flush, which started across her chest, then grew, mottled red and dead white, up her neck and finally to her cheeks. She was deeply embarrassed by this outward signal of her feelings, but years of living with it had taught her that the only remedy was to ignore it. “Everyone told me the search firm’s report was great,” she protested.

“I’m sure it is. They told me over the phone it would be, and why should they lie? I haven’t opened it.”

“Haven’t opened it? Why not?”

“Because once I open it, I have to turn it over to the aldermen. When they get it, they have to vote, and they’re not ready to vote. At least not the way we want.”

Ruth let her confusion show. “But the aldermen worked hand in glove with the search firm. Why wouldn’t they accept the results?”

The mayor trained his sad brown eyes on Ruth. “Because they’re not ready,” he said as if it was all the explanation required. “I, we, have more work to do.”

“But Anna Abbott—”

“As president of the Board of Aldermen, Anna can threaten, wheedle and cajole, but in the end she only gets one vote. Several board members are just not ready to vote your way.”

“Why not?”

Mayor Rosenfeld came around to Ruth’s side of the desk, leaned his stocky body against it so he was looking down at her and said in a low voice, “Three reasons.” He extended a stubby finger. “One, there are those who think your roots in the community aren’t deep enough.”

Ruth nodded. This was a reference to her transfer from the Boston PD into the New Derby department as a lieutenant ten years earlier. New Derby liked to grow its own officers. It was an objection easily handled. None of the other finalists had any ties to New Derby.

“Two,” the mayor waved another fat digit, “there are those who feel your ties to the community run
too
deep.”

Ruth understood this as well. Some forty members of her husband Marty’s extended family, the Murphy-McDonough clan, lived in New Derby. They taught school, fought fires, delivered mail and owned a variety of businesses, including a dry cleaner’s, two liquor stores, and the only cab company. They were not without influence. Ruth’s transfer into the department had been the direct result of her father-in-law’s intervention. Ruth wasn’t worried about this objection either. The search firm’s report proved she was qualified for the job.

The mayor pushed his heavy glasses to his forehead and rubbed his eyes. “Both of which could be easily handled, as you know—if it weren’t for the big number three—your relationship with District Attorney Baines.”

Rosenfeld looked at Ruth expectantly.When she didn’t speak, he went on. “Everyone knows you two don’t get along. No one knows why.”The mayor paused again. Ruth knew he would love for her to tell him why. He was in a business where information, to hold or trade, was a valuable commodity.

But she wasn’t telling. “Some tension between us is normal,” she pointed out. “Police arrest on probable cause. D.A.s prosecute beyond a reasonable doubt. There’s a big gray area for finger-pointing in between.”

“Are you saying your relationship with Baines is ‘normal’? If I ask the mayors and town managers of the forty-one other communities in the county, will they tell me their police chiefs have the same level of problems with Baines?”

“No,” Ruth admitted.

“You’re right, because I’ve already asked them.” Rosenfeld softened his tone.

“Why would that come up now?”

The mayor looked at her like she was born yesterday. “Why do you think?”

“Because Baines has been dribbling in people’s ears, planting doubts.” During the early part of the selection process, Ruth had expected trouble from Baines, but when six months went by without a whiff of him, she’d let her guard down.

“Exactly. I don’t know what gives between you two, but he doesn’t want you to be chief.”

Ruth responded with silence. The mayor threw up his hands. “Look, everyone in the Commonwealth knows Baines is a horse’s patootie, but he’s the district attorney of this county, and in this state D.A.s generally stay in office until they move up or pass on. I don’t see Baines moving up any time soon. It’s important for the police chief to be able to work with the district attorney’s office.You know that.”

“I work fine with his office.”

“With the district attorney, then. Chief, it’s not an unreasonable thing.”

Ruth shifted to look the mayor in the eye. “What would you suggest I do?”

The mayor returned her gaze. “Get back in his good graces?”

Ruth walked to one of the big windows and looked out. She couldn’t return to a place she’d never been. The silence stretched again.

The mayor put a pudgy hand on her shoulder. “All right, then.” His voice was almost gentle. “This isn’t the end of the world. I’ll take care of it. Just stay out of Baines’s line of fire.”

After the mayor left, Ruth sat quietly at her desk. She was rattled by what the mayor had said, and angry at herself for allowing the search firm’s positive report to raise her hopes so high. She didn’t believe in counting chickens. “It’s never done until it’s done,” she muttered to herself. “You know better.”

Ruth hadn’t set out to become a police chief or even a police officer. She’d taken the civil service exam at the urging of her in-laws, who never could quite get the distinction between a degree in sociology and one in social work. The test taken, Ruth found herself at a moment in time when the discrimination lawsuits had been settled and the Boston PD needed women, quickly. A window opened and she’d scooted through it, thinking only of paying off her college loans.

She’d turned out to be good at the job, first in Boston and then in New Derby. Police work played to her strengths—her ability to take charge, solve problems, make quick decisions. And, in the early days, being so often the only woman on the shift made virtues of her weaknesses—her difficulty showing her emotions, her minimal need for socializing, and her greater desire for respect than for acceptance. Common wisdom said the women had to work twice as hard as the men to get ahead. Ruth thought a lot of the men didn’t work so awfully hard.

Three years ago as captain of the Detective Squad, she’d raised her head up out of the day-to-day long enough to realize she could become chief. The old chief had seen it, too, at about the same time. He’d pushed her onto visible statewide taskforces, taken her to the annual dinners of city volunteer organizations, found reasons for her to make presentations to the mayor and the aldermen. Then, suddenly, the old chief was gone, his wife’s cancer scare causing him to retire sooner than either he or Ruth expected.

Now that she was doing the chief’s job, Ruth was amazed by how much she loved it, scared by how much she wanted it. The months while the search firm toiled had been agonizing for her, made more and not less so by the people in town who assured her she was a shoo-in. And now, with the goal so close at hand, District Attorney Baines was threatening it. So typical of that odious man.

Ruth took several long breaths to calm herself, closed her eyes, and leaned back in her chair, then straightened herself up and got on with her work.

After lunch, Ruth, Lawry, Moscone, and McGrath sat at the big conference table in Ruth’s office and reviewed the events of the morning.

“So this guy sees that he screwed up the Kendall woman’s car, freaks out, and takes off,” McGrath offered.

“Or,” Moscone turned Al Pace’s picture over in his hands, “she and Pace were involved and he wanted to get rid of her.”

“Involved?” Lawry asked, not challenging, but interested. “You mean romantically? A Derby Hills fund manager and a Derby Mills auto mechanic?”

Wordlessly, Moscone passed Pace’s photo to Lawry. “Ah ha,” Lawry said when he saw it.

“Why did she have a packed bag in her car?” Ruth wanted to know.

“Maybe they were running away together and something went wrong.”

“Oh, for pity’s sake.” McGrath was having none of this. “Where did you get that?”

“Again, have you seen this guy?” Moscone pushed the photo to McGrath.

“Enough with how good looking he is already. What are you, gay?”

Ruth wasn’t so sure about Moscone’s affair theory. What she’d glimpsed of Tracey Kendall’s hyper-organized life didn’t leave much room for that kind of messy social arrangement, and the clothes in the bag had included a comfortable old T-shirt for sleeping, not lingerie for an affair. But you never knew with people, and this early in the investigation, the goal was to discover any possible connection between the victim and the man who’d disappeared. Ruth vowed to keep an open mind.

“Did Pace have any priors?” she asked Moscone.

“No, but he was in the service, so we can get fingerprints if we need them.”

“Are we all agreed this could well be more than an accident?” Ruth asked.

Lawry and Moscone nodded. Ruth stared at McGrath, who pulled a face. “Are we even going to talk about what a stinker this case is?”

“Why is it a stinker?” Moscone asked.

“It’s a complicated case,” McGrath answered. “Even we started out believing it was a simple accident. A defense attorney will have a field day with that. Plus, we’ve got a high profile victim, which will attract the press, and not in a good way for the D.A., and a sympathetic defendant. Let’s face it, whether he did it deliberately or not, Pace’s never been in trouble, he’s got a beautiful family—”

“And he’s so handsome,” Moscone interjected, but this time, before McGrath could say anything, Moscone broke into a wide grin.

“Well, yeah,” McGrath had to concede. “Prosecutors hate good-looking defendants, because juries hate convicting them.”

“So, what you’re saying is we’re trying to build a case against a guy the district attorney’s office will plead out, absolutely best case.”

Ruth was honest. “With a high profile victim, even pleading it out will cause heartburn. McGrath’s right. This is the kind of case D.A.s hate, even good ones.”

“Which means ours will hate it even more,” McGrath finished.

Despite Rosenfeld’s warning to stay out of Baines’s way, Ruth shut the discussion down. “We can’t worry about that now. We don’t even really know what we’re dealing with.”

By the end of the meeting, each of them had an assignment. The most important thing was to locate Pace. Lawry would coordinate a search with state and local forces. Following up on Moscone’s affair theory, Lawry would also direct visits by local law enforcement, armed with photos of Tracey and Al, to every hotel, motel, and guest house within a half-hour drive of Tracey’s office. McGrath would go back to Pace’s house to search for connections to Tracey Kendall and talk to any of Pace’s friends who might have a guess as to his whereabouts, or at least know what kind of vehicle he’d taken from the empty stable bay. Moscone and the chief were heading to the state garage and then on to the Kendall house.

Sergeant Dan Logan of the Massachusetts State Police Collision Analysis and Reconstruction Section (called, too cutely in Ruth’s opinion, C.A.R.S.), met Ruth and Moscone at the door to the state police garage. Logan was short with an upturned nose and cherub cheeks. Only the flecks of gray in his sandy hair and a web of fine wrinkles around his eyes kept him from looking like a twelve-year-old. “You’re here about the Kendall car,” he said.

“How’s it coming?” Ruth asked.

“Slowly. The car was traveling at an extremely high rate of speed when it hit an immovable object, a thick stone wall. No braking occurred. The damage was bound to be extensive.”

“Were the brakes working?”

“The entire brake system was destroyed in the crash. We can tell that the brake lights weren’t on at impact. Take the speed and lack of skid marks anywhere on the hill and combine it with the fact we know she was alert right before the crash, and I’d say it’s a good bet the brakes were gone.”

“Were the brakes tampered with?” Moscone pushed.

“There’s no physical evidence left to show they were.”

“What about brake fluid? Can’t you search the road?”

“Assuming I could find anything, all that would tell me is the brake fluid came out, not how the lines got damaged. We’ll download the car’s event data recorder in the next day or so.”

“The black box?”

“Yup. They were originally put in cars to improve airbag deployment, but now most of them record data continuously on a ten-second loop that stops when a collision occurs. If we’re lucky, it’ll tell us precisely how fast she was going and whether the brake pedal was pressed down any time before impact.”

They were quiet for a moment, absorbing this, then Ruth asked, “Sergeant, does it affect your analysis knowing the last person who touched this car has disappeared?”